As Leroi acknowledges, decades of scholarly effort by philosophers and historians such as Allan Gotthelf and James Lennox have gone into the reassessment of Aristotelian biology and its effect on the history of Western science. In this respect, the book broaches no new questions, and brings no new perspective to the heated debates among Aristotelian scholars.
But that is to miss its point. The Lagoon is a wonderful introduction to Aristotle's biology, which specialists will also enjoy. Every page is a reminder of the great beauty that we can experience by seeing the world through Aristotelian eyes. Roberto Lo Presti lectures on classics and ancient philosophy and coordinates the doctoral programme on the history of ancient science at the Berlin Graduate School of Ancient Studies, part of the Humboldt University of Berlin. You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar.
Correspondence to Roberto Lo Presti. Science visualization: Branching arguments. Developmental biology: Life in flux. Roberto Lo Presti. Reprints and Permissions. Lo Presti, R. History of science: The first scientist. Nature , — Download citation. Published : 20 August Issue Date : 21 August Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:. Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article. Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative.
Nature Advanced search. According to Aristotle he was the first person to investigate the basic principles of matter, and the historian Herodotus writes that he predicted an eclipse in B. But he could also wield his intellect for more earthly purposes, as Aristotle demonstrates in an amusing anecdote. As far back as we can trace the intellectual heritage that culminated in modern science, it leads here.
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Sign Up. Already a subscriber? But to find the first scientist with these characteristics, you have to travel to the Renaissance, to the midth century. You probably think of Galileo Galilei at the mention of Renaissance science, and rightfully so.
He overturned Aristotle's ideas on motion and began to explain such complex concepts as force, inertia and acceleration. He built one of the first telescopes and used it to study the cosmos. What he saw through the lenses of his device removed Earth from the center of the universe and put it in its proper place.
In all his work, Galileo stressed the need for observation and experimentation. And yet Galileo owes much to another seminal figure born 20 years earlier. His name was William Gilbert, a rather obscure figure in the history of science. Along with Galileo, Gilbert had been busy practicing the scientific method in his work and setting an example for his peers after the first decade of the 17th century had past. Gilbert was born in to a prominent local family and attended Cambridge University between and Eventually, he settled in London and embarked on a successful career as a physician, attending to both Queen Elizabeth I and, upon her death in , to King James I.
It was Gilbert's investigations into the nature of magnetism , however, that may make him the first modern scientist. In the book's preface, Gilbert described the need for "sure experiments and demonstrated arguments" instead of "conjectures and the opinions of philosophical speculators.
The scientist followed his own advice. Gilbert's book recounted his investigations in so much detail that another person could replicate his work and verify his results. This research led to many important discoveries about magnetism. He was the first person to fully explain how a magnetic compass worked and to propose that Earth was a magnetic planet. The learned fellow also turned his inquisitive mind to the heavens. Gilbert directly influenced Galileo. The famous Italian scientist read De Magnete and repeated many of its experiments.
It's easy to imagine Galileo poring over the book and nodding in affirmation at Gilbert's ideas about experimentation and observation — ideas that Galileo himself would apply in his groundbreaking work. Is it any wonder Galileo proclaimed Gilbert to be the founder of the scientific method? This endorsement alone may be enough to substantiate the claim that William Gilbert was the first modern scientist. Many science books identify Francis Bacon as the father of the scientific method.
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